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THE ban on magic mushrooms will increase hard drugs use, the head of a leading city drug agency warned today.

Magic mushrooms were until recently sold legally from many shops in the Capital.

But the Drugs Act 2005 reclassified magic mushrooms as a class A drug and their sale became illegal on July 18.

And now the head of drug agency Crew 2000, which provides advice on drugs and sexual health to thousands of people across the Capital, has condemned the ban as "bonkers", saying it will lead to users turning to hard drugs instead.

He believes people will want to experience the same highs they were able to get through magic mushrooms but will now be forced to buy illegal drugs from dealers.

Anyone caught buying, selling or possessing magic mushrooms could face jail after the Government put them into the same class as heroin and cocaine.

Supporters claim that psycolin-containing fungi are harmless and have warned that drug dealers will now benefit as users turn to them for supplies rather than to previously legitimate traders.

John Arthur, manager of Crew 2000, said that the legislation was ill thought out.

He said: "This is clearly bonkers and out of touch with reality."

Mr Arthur, whose organisation has helped more than 12,000 people in the last year, said he had done extensive work with young drug users on the streets and found that mushrooms were not fatal nor did they cause significant public order offences.

He said: "Users will go on to harder drugs now. They'll go to drug dealers to get them, but they won't sell mushrooms because they have little retail value and are more interested in selling lucrative drugs like LSD."

Mr Arthur argued that if people were forced to go and pick mushrooms themselves in the wild this could increase the danger of picking poisonous types.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Drugs Forum, a national drugs policy and information charity, agreed that removing mushrooms from public sale may be a "gateway to harder drugs".

The Pipe Shop on Leith Walk was one of a handful of shops in the Capital which sold magic mushrooms prior to the ban.

The shop has started selling wristbands saying "save our mushrooms" to raise money to fund a judicial review to get the ban overturned.

Pipe Shop owner Alan Myerthall said: "They are trying to make mushrooms out to be like crack, but people have been using them since biblical times."

THE FACTS

DRUG agency CREW 2000 (Scotland) has just published its annual report. The organisation provides one-to-one advice and support sessions with young drug users and also gives advice on sexual health.

Figures just released showed that visits to the Cockburn Street shop were up more than 12 per cent on 2003/2004.

The organisation also trains other professionals and young people on the effects of drugs.

Most of those surveyed said they had tried drugs in a friend's house and only 3.1 per cent said they had had a bad experience.

Heroin...that reminds me of this time I went to Camden town while mushrooms were still legal. There were lots of hippy type people, and then there was this one guy, tall, white, sharply dressed in business attire (dress shoes, black socks, blazer, etc etc), and he stuck out like a sore thumb. So I watch him go up to this food vendor and ask him "Do you know where I can get some heroin?" The guy gives him a blank look, and then the business guy (gov't agent?) says..."Heroin...you know, drugs? Do you have any?"

It gave me a hearty laugh

--------------------"What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?"

"Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword"
- John Mayer

Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln